IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v92y2018icp168-181.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subjective financial literacy and retail investors’ behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Bellofatto, Anthony
  • D’Hondt, Catherine
  • De Winne, Rudy

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between subjective financial literacy, i.e. self-reported by investors, and trading behavior. In particular, we use the level of financial knowledge and experience reported in the MiFID tests by retail investors. Such tests are implemented in the EU from the so-called Markets in Financial Instruments Directive since November 2007. We show that subjective financial literacy helps explain cross-sectional variations in retail investors’ behavior. Investors who report higher levels of financial literacy seem to invest smarter, even after controlling for gender, age, portfolio value, trading experience and education. They trade more and are less prone to the disposition effect. They tend to concentrate their portfolios on a small set of stocks and achieve diversification through investment funds holding. Their trading behaviors allow them to display higher gross and net returns as well as higher excess Sharpe ratios. Our findings are relevant for both policy making and understanding retail investors’ behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Bellofatto, Anthony & D’Hondt, Catherine & De Winne, Rudy, 2018. "Subjective financial literacy and retail investors’ behavior," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 168-181.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:92:y:2018:i:c:p:168-181
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2018.05.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426618300980
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2018.05.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Retail investors; Financial literacy; MiFID;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:92:y:2018:i:c:p:168-181. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.